The Impacts of High-Speed Rail on Territorial Accessibility: A Comparison Among Some European Countries

Over the centuries, the means of transport have changed due to the technological development, and one of the most interesting sectors is that of rail, which has experienced a real revolution. Indeed, investments in High Speed Rail (HSR) have been significant and new projects are going to be built around the world. Fast trains represent comfortable, safe, flexible and eco-sustainable means of transport both for people and goods. There is a classification of the effects induced by HSR services, according to which they can be grouped into: impacts on the transport system (internal), socio-economic impacts (external) and environmental impacts (external). Much less studied, however, are the impacts on accessibility. Users living in a given area, characterized by low accessibility to transport, will consequently have low accessibility to job opportunities, health and educational facilities, services, etc. Based on the previous considerations, the purpose of this paper is to study and analyze the impacts on accessibility induced by the introduction of HSR services in four European countries, i.e. Spain, France, Germany and Italy. The main findings show that HSR has brought an increase of accessibility.